Any mistake in any planning will be in the direction of most harm.
Old engineering wisdom

Chapter 13

I am a Hobo

I observed the periphery of the railway station to look for a place to hide and observe the rail traffic, the schedule of trains, and passenger mannerisms. Near the station was a building that had been damaged in the war. I found a relatively safe spot on the upper floor that gave me a good view of the area. I sat there all day long, just watching, and even had the audacity to take pictures with the little Agfa Carat camera that I still had along. Late in the afternoon an empty freight train pulled into the station and I noticed a few civilians and soldiers hitch a ride on it.

I ran downstairs and jumped into one of the empty cars.

I had hiked about 150 miles through Latvian and Lithuanian forests from the former Courland front to Kelme, carefully avoiding any contact with Russian troops. Now I was a hobo, trying to ride an empty freight train towards the old Fatherland Germany. I wanted to get home from the damn war.

It felt good to move again after all that sitting around. I watched the scenery and the other “hobos” carefully, and noticed that there were Russian guards on the train and at every railroad trestle. That indicated in all likelihood there was still Lithuanian partisan activity in the area. That was bad news, because the Russians would be suspicious and alert. Finally at about 11 pm the train rolled into Taurage and stopped right at the station. Shit, what now? I saw all the people leave the train and was contemplating whether I should do the same. I decided to take a chance and see what would happen. I sat in one corner of the rail car and pretended to be asleep, figuring it would be an excuse for not getting off, if the guards found me.

At the old delousing station, once more

I was stuck here in this bloody old railroad station in Taurage, as I had been before, when this was the delousing station for going home on furlough.

Russian guards were searching the empty train, car by car, even checking under each car for stowaways. When a guard checked the car I was in, I quietly released the safety catch on my loaded Mauser without removing it from my pocket. I was ready to pump a bullet into this guard, when the guard motioned me to get off the train I saw additional guards standing below on the station platform. That changed the odds for winning considerably, and I safe’d my gun and left it in my pocket. The guards tried to talk to me, but since I didn’t speak Russian, they couldn’t figure out who I was, and what business I had on this train. They took me to the guard station for interrogation.

An older Russian officer tried to talk to me in Russian, Lithuanian and then Polish. Finally I had to admit being German and they immediately frisked me. When they found my Mauser, every soldier in the room leveled their gun at me. Good grief, I thought, the Russians are still scared shitless of the Germans. Next they found my diary, maps, compass, my German Luftwaffe papers and photographs and the 35 mm camera that had accompanied me throughout the war. The commandant hollered for an interpreter to come on the double. A seedy looking character in dirty fatigues came running in. He tried to talk to me in a godawful German.

I told him that I was coming from the Courland front and was a former German soldier. I said that a Russian officer had told us after the capitulation, “The war is over for you, go home,” and that was what I was trying to do. After the interpreter translated, the Russians put their guns away. They offered me something to eat and drink, then put me in a holding cell underneath the station building.

The cell had a window below ground level, with steel bars nailed to the wooden window frame, but no window in it. Outside of the window was a concrete casement with an iron grate up on top. Blast it, I thought, trapped again and I resolved to escape, and went into action as soon as the guard left.

I took a wooden board from the bunk bed and used it as a lever to bend the bars back and forth, applying a shearing force to the nail heads holding the bars in place. Eventually one of the nail heads popped off. Then I heard the guard come back to check on me through the window in the door. The guard would come back every hour to check on me, so I had to time my work to coincide with the guards absence. I figured if I could get one more nail head to break, I would only have to lift the grate, and I would be free. At daylight, I ceased my activity. I very carefully placed the broken nail head back on top of the nail. I would break out during the next night.

I laid down and must have fallen asleep. I dreamed that I was a tiny kid again enclosed by a play pen, and imprisoned by the bars of its railing. I couldn’t get out until I had learned a couple of tricks to deceive my mother, who was holding me captive. I remembered standing up in that dreadful cage they called a crib. After several unsuccessful schemes I finally learned how to tip the whole crib on its side rail. If I kept quiet enough so mother wouldn’t notice, I could get a long way from that crib.

I woke up when a guard came in to bring some food. It was a thick soup of questionable ingredients, with dark bread and water. The food was terrible, but I was hungry and ate it. I was led to another interrogation. This time a nurse was the interpreter. She was good looking and spoke German fluently. When I asked her at the end of the interrogation what would happen next, she translated that to the commandant and he replied that I would be shipped back to a jail in Schaulen, the direction I had come from. An armed guard was assigned to escort me on the next train that entered the station from the west.

We stepped up to a freight car that was filled with demobilized Russian soldiers coming back from Germany. I noticed that all the freight cars had bicycles piled high on their roofs. Obviously that was loot the soldiers had stolen in Germany, and were taking home with them. After the guard and I were in the car, the station commandant stepped up to the car too, and announced to the soldiers that I was a German soldier and warned them not to harm me in any way. The train started rolling back in the direction I had come from.

The soldiers in the train were in a boisterous mood, they had won the war, had survived and were going home. When they found out that I was from Berlin, they told me that they had been in the battle of Berlin, that the city had been completely destroyed by their artillery bombardments, and that they had fucked the hell out of all the women. This information did not cheer me up, but I pretended indifference so that they didn’t get any satisfaction out of their psychological warfare.

What surprised me was that not one soldier was armed. I concluded that Josef Stalin was indeed a very smart man. These soldiers had seen with their own eyes how people in the capitalistic world lived, and I was sure they would compare that to what they were going to see at home. They could now form their own opinion about the accomplishments of their communist regime.

I suffered an hour of their psychological warfare, then the train stopped at Siauliai (Schaulen). We got off the train as it was getting dark and I sized up my guard to see if I could get rid of him somehow. He was an older militia (reserve) type character. We walked along a deserted street and I was getting ready for a judo chop against his throat. Before I could execute it, some soldiers appeared from around a street corner, and that saved the guard, and possibly me.

When we reached the jail, I was marched into a cell with several other prisoners. There were Russians, Lithuanians and Poles, and now there was also a German in the cell. Since nobody could, or wanted to speak German, there was no communication. Some of these cell mates seemed like ordinary criminals, who obviously had lots of experience in the life behind bars.

The next day a new man, better looking and better dressed, came into the cell. After several attempts to communicate, we discovered that we both had a fairly good command of the English language. He told me that he was a lawyer who was accused of collaborating with the Germans during the German occupation. That sounded fishy, because he claimed not to be able to speak German. He asked me if I was armed when I was arrested. When I told him that I was, he casually mentioned that being in possession of a firearm carried a 15 year jail term under Russian law. That came as quite a shock, but I thought, we’ll have to see if my gun will make it to a court hearing.

The next day an armed guard took me by train to Kaunas, the former capital of Lithuania, and I was bureaucratically booked into jail there. This included fingerprinting and the confiscation of all pieces of clothing that could be instrumental in a suicide. At least a dozen other prisoners were in the cell I was led to. They were all Russian soldiers and the atmosphere here was different. Some of the prisoners were playing chess with figures which they had manufactured from the soggy bread that was common in Russia. I played some games with them and won a game. Some of the men even smoked self-rolled cigarettes.

Who me, a British spy?

When I was led to an interrogation, I immediately sensed that I was up against a different game. A civilized looking Russian army officer in his early 30s questioned me. He wore an immaculately tailored uniform and expensive riding boots. His manners were impeccable. I judged his army rank to be at least that of a captain if not higher. The interpreter was again a very good looking woman in a nurse uniform. The officer offered me a manufactured Russian papyrossi cigarette out of a silver cigarette case. From past observances of the German interrogation procedures this friendly gesture put me immediately on alert. I was obviously dealing with a top notch intelligence officer. The officer then sat on top of his desk, so as to elevate himself above me, and opened the interrogation with, “We know now where you came from, Gans.” Since there is no H in the Russian language they always called me Gans, which in German means goose. The officer then paused menacingly, and took a drag on his cigarette. The suspense was “killing” me. The officer continued in a deliberately slow and arrogant pace, “Gans, you are a British spy, who was dropped by parachute to make contact with the Lithuanian underground organization!”

That accusation was certainly unexpected and an outrageously ridiculous fabrication. I almost broke out laughing. I had read enough about Russian tribunal cases to not laugh at his nonsensical accusation. In a subconscious compulsion of self-defense, I made a facial expression of absolute wonder, and replied that I was puzzled, not only by this accusation against me personally, but that the British would find a need for espionage against their Russian Allies. This statement seemed to surprise the officer, because I had intuitively elevated the conversation to a political level, which was not the subject of this interrogation. I sensed that the officer was stuck now, and could not continue the interrogation. I concluded from his reaction that he was surprised that his broadside had not devastated me.

After that flash of verbal fencing, the officer sat down behind his desk and questioned me on details of my hike from Courland. He wanted to know why it had taken me so long to get to Taurage. I, encouraged by my initial success, now did something that startled both the officer and the interpreter, and could only be defined by the Jewish word chutzpah. I took my right jackboot off and rolled my pant leg up to show the nurse/interpreter the enormous scar on my right leg. I explained that it was a war injury. The nurse/interpreter was very interested and obviously surprised about my use of proper medical terms in my explanations. She accepted my impediment as an explanation for why it had taken me so long to walk that distance.

As I explained my leg problem, a new idea hit me like lightning. Coming back to the officer’s original accusation, I told the nurse that I didn’t think the British would be so stupid as to send a crippled man like me on such an important mission. My leg injury would have made it very difficult to successfully land after a parachute jump. The nurse had some difficulty suppressing a laugh as she translated what I had said. I sensed that I had gone to the limit of what I could say. If I ridiculed the officer directly, I was in deep shit and that was very dangerous with a Russian in a power position.

The officer hid his disappointment very well. I was sure that he didn’t expect that kind of a reply from a 21 year old Luftwaffen corporal. He then questioned me about Courland defense details, probably in the hope of tripping me with some inconsistency. I gave him the information he wanted, since the war was over. The officer showed his manners when he thanked me and sent me back to my cell.

The next day I was taken by train southeast to a new location. The name on the destination railway station told me that I was in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.

The personal property, taken away from me as evidence, was always carried by my guards, and it got less and less with each transfer. After the arrest in Taurage my Mauser automatic had found a new owner, some of the other evidence such as maps, compass, etc. had vanished in Schaulen. That didn’t bother me, since these items could have hurt my defense. I was surprised however, when the guard asked me if he could buy the little 35 mm Agfa camera. Stupidly I said no. It might have been a good idea to get rid of that evidence too. The previous investigators had taken the film out of the camera and held it up to the light to see what was on it. They did a good job of eliminating suspicious evidence. The same happened with my roll of bulk film that I carried with me. My case seemingly began to look better. However to anybody, knowing the Russian justice system, my idea of relief was overly optimistic if not totally unjustified.

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SBN 1-89-634-05-0, Printed in U.S.A.  Copyright 1999 by Hugelwilhelm Publishing Co.  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages.